Sitting Block Island, RI.
I mentioned the building winds last evening and it continued as forecast. Nice this old full keel boat does well with winds astern as we had a rocket ride through the night, lying Block Island easily this morning. A scrap of the main with the working jib had us running 7+ kts pretty comfortably in 20-25 knots. Only bad thing was and is the cold. We are indeed missing the Caribbean already sitting through our watches last night in a few too many layers. Dang.
At the moment we are attached to one of the city moorings here in Block Island and intend to rest a couple days, then continue on to our frioends in Newburyport, MA. We are presently awaiting the call back from U.S Customs to check in via the Small Vessel Reporting System, (seems they know it’s good to go but are still looking for the agent who knows how to make it work for us…more to follow), awaiting the arrival of the squalls from the cold front we ran ahead of last night to wash the sea salt from our decks, and trying our best to hold out before pouring the celebratory rum beverage as a completion of this passage.
While not even close to a straight line with our deviations to match the winds and currents and not to mention the proclivity of our wind vane steering to swerve around the Atlantic with each puff of wind shift we covered 1568 nautical miles with an average speed of 5.7 knots, with just over 100 gallons of fuel yet in the tank. Good sailing and good eating along the way.
Yes it is time for that rum drink, break out the ice…